I was at The Post-Standard/Syracuse Media Group tent at the New York State Fair the other day when Dominic Ficarra --- a retiree from Solvay Process -- stopped by for a minute. He is a 74-year-old Town of Camillus grandfather, and every year he brings his granddaughter, 12-year-old Kim Gilday, to the fair.

She also gets the annual chance to bring along a friend --- as in Maddy Hagan. The three of them came over to talk about the fair and going back to school and life in general, and I asked them if they wanted to sign up for a raffle for an iPad 2, which caused Kim to look at her grandfather and shake her head in disbelief.

"An iPad?" she said. "He won't even text."

That was the moment. I realized, with great joy, that I had found my man.

"Mr. Ficarra!" I said. "Let me guess: You use a flip top phone."

He smiled. Great pride. He pulled out the phone. Tiny. Compact. Blue.

A flip top.

"It doesn't even have a camera!" he said, as his granddaughter cringed.

I'd been wanting to write about someone like Dominic. My brother-in-law is the same way: He got a 'smart phone,' grew tired of the way it was always chiming and cooing and beeping and trying to demand his attention, and he dumped it. Went back to the elemental model: The flip top.

So I'd been looking for someone else, someone in greater Syracuse, who - in the same resolute fashion - simply won't give in.

Oh yeah, Kim agreed. Her grandpa was my man.

To Kim, it makes utterly no sense. Get this, she exclaimed: She'll be at school, and she'll need a ride, and he won't accept a text. Won't even look at it! She has to CALL him, and he makes her talk to him - TALK TO HIM! - and he'll say: 'I'll be there in five minutes or so. Wait for me.'

Five minutes or so? Kim was aghast. Come on, grandpa! Do what everybody does. At the last minute, JUST SEND A TEXT!

Dominic Ficarra at the New York State Fair with Maddy Hagan (left) and his granddaughter, Kimberly Gilday.Sean Kirst | skirst@syracuse.com

"Imagine," Dominic said, relishing each word. "She has to get on the phone and talk to me."

He remembers his childhood, on the North Side. Smart phones? Hardly. Only the wealthy even had their own private lines. Everyone else, like Dominic's family, had party lines - five or six families trying to talk at once - and you'd pick up the phone and some woman down the street would realize you were listening in and she'd shout:

He thought he'd need to replace it once - "It fell into his coffee," Kim said - and he went to the electronics store, surrounded by these beeping, singing slabs that could bring him music or directions or the morning newspaper or the answer to any question that came to his mind, and he kept telling the guy, no, no, no, all of that is too much, and finally the guy brought out almost the simplest flip top he had, with a camera.

A camera?

"What do I need a camera in my phone for?" Dominic asked.

"What if you want to take a picture?" the man asked.

"I want to take a picture," Dominic replied, "I'll use my camera."

Thankfully, the first phone dried out. It still works.

Kim shook her head. "He's silly," she said, and she looked at her grandfather with a combination of disbelief, awe and admiration, and then - as they do each year - they went off to see the fair.

- Are you a holdout for a flip top phone? Do you know someone who refuses to give in? You can read more reader feedback on the question here. Columnist Sean Kirst also invites you to leave your stories here or share them with him at skirst@syracuse.com.